2.21.2011

Some items of local note: I interviewed the shadow cluster Frank Hinton for the"Youth Is Write" series on Fix It Broken. We talk about the difference between being a person and having feelings (spoiler alert: there probably isn't one), processes, sick thoughts, staple guns, and puking. Thanks to Frank for being a fascinating person and thanks to Greg Dybec for putting together this project.

Other items: "Burk's Nub" is live at Route 9, the new-ish online journal of work by UMass MFA students edited by Sarah Malone. Tons of other great stuff in the new issue by other sexy UMassers, some bandmates, some alumni, some transplanted Spaniards, some interviews of translators, some dream detection, some videos, some echo brothers, some chemical mist, and Deepok Chopra. Read around.

Burk previously appeared in the now sadly defunct Backwards City Review. I remember sitting in my friend Nick's apartment in 2007 in NYC and Nick telling me he'd read the story in BCR and really liked it. Then we walked to get elaborate sandwiches through the dead Wall Street night, where in day people patrol with major firearms, and the bodega featured obnoxious young money nerds blatantly ignoring the basic humanness of those they were ordering sandwiches from. "Burk's Nub" is about loneliness. One time about this story I said "Loneliness is the primary mood of visionaries." The story has band nerds and pimples in it. It has fast food restaurants that point their vents at the street to make you hungry. It has a racist uncle.

In less local news, people from Egypt have been sending pizzas to Wisconsin. How beautiful is that? Sometimes I read the comments on internet news articles, especially on Yahoo, and feel some weird new kind of catharsis about how hopelessly ridiculous and dangerous most people act when they post anonymous comments on the internet. It is not a "good" feeling but feelings don't work like that anyway. I just remembered that the Burk story has pizzas in it too! Continuity!